It is more difficult to pass over from totalitarianism to
democracy than from democracy to totalitarianism. Democracy
calls for deep-going, value-oriented changes in the public mentality
it calls for time.

Two Huge Surprises

The revolutions of 1989 in Eastern and Central Europe rank among historical
events of greatest significance. There is basic agreement that in
spite of their mostly nonviolent nature those events must be treated
as revolutions, both because of their revolutionary scope and the
scale of revolutionary mobilization. Thus, they initiated radical
and fundamental transformations of all dimensions of society. And,
also, they involved direct and immediate participation of large masses
of citizens. That seems enough to put them in line with great revolutions
of the past. The testimony of an eminent British historian is unambiguous:
"The revolutions of 1989 have been real revolutions: popular revolts
before which armed governments, one after another, have collapsed;
the recovery by nations of lost liberty" (Trevor-Roper, 1989: 14).
There is also vast consensus that the impact of 1989 is global,
with ramifications spreading across the whole human society. As the
editor of Daedalus puts it in an issue devoted to The Exit
from Communism:" "The year 1989, with its unprecedented happenings
in both Central and Eastern Europe, must figure among the few whose
consequences have transformed the world" (Graubard, 1992: v).

These revolutions were also among the most baffling in history. Nobody
could have predicted them. Jean Kirkpatrick expressed the mood of
common people, politicians and scholars alike: "What a fantastic surprise
the collapse of communism was I believe there has
been no greater surprise in modern history and we should admit
it than the speed and the totality with which Communist regimes
fell in Eastern Europe and in the Socialist fatherland itself the
Soviet Union" (Kirkpatrick, 1992: 7).

No wonder that such an amazing feat of world change and such a powerful
affirmation of human agency released widespread enthusiasm, elation,
euphoria and unbridled optimism. Everything seemed so easy and promising.
But soon the post-Communist societies were to wake up from the happy
dream. Outside observers wrote: "Two years after the Revolutions of
1989 in Central and Eastern Europe, the mood has soured" (Chirot,
1992: l); "pessimism is the attitude of the hour" (Beckert, 1992:
2); "neither capitalism, enlightenment, or democracy has proved as
pristine or as accessible as everyone wished" (Alexander, 1991: 4).

Insiders have been even more forthright. Vaclav Havel, one of the
architects of the revolution, gave his recent account in "Paradise
Lost," and the picture he paints is dramatic and dismal: "Hatred among
nationalities, suspicion, racism, even signs of fascism; vicious demagogy,
intrigue, and deliberate lying; politicking, and unrestrained, unheeding
struggle for purely particular interests, a hunger for power, unadulterated
ambition, fanaticism of every imaginable kind; new and unprecedented
varieties of robbery, the rise of different mafias; the general lack
of tolerance, understanding, taste, moderation, reason" (Havel, 1992:
6). Thus, the gloom of the nineties replaced the joy of the eighties.

This is the second huge surprise of recent history: why did
all this go wrong? What bad fortune keeps us Eastern and Central Europeans
from attaining the goal of democratic polity, market economy and open
culture, since the proverbial Wall has crumbled? As a sociologist
I propose to seek the answer much closer to Earth than fate, destiny
or providence. I propose to delve into human agency, to look at the
people, ultimate makers of history, but also ultimate villains of
historical failures. And then the secret of the current breakdown
of the post-Communist project will become blindingly obvious: it is
ourselves, Eastern Europeans.

The Realm of Intangibles

The dominant tendency of sociological explanation is to invoke "hard"
institutional or organizational facts, economic or political arrangements,
material resources, technologies, etc. It is more rare to turn attention
to the people inhabiting those institutions, running organizations,
producing and consuming, ruling and obeying, utilizing resources and
applying technologies. It is high time to bring people back into sociological
theory, including the theory of post-communism, and to pay much more
attention to "soft," human factors standing in the way of smooth transition.

The central theme of anti-Communist revolutions and post-Communist
changes is grasped by the metaphor of "returning to Europe." An informed
observer notes that "In all the lands, the phrase people use to sum
up what is happening is the return to Europe" (Ash, 1990a: 3). But
rarely is it recognized that "Europe" may mean two different things.
As Zbigniew Brzezinski insightfully observes, the European house
is not the same as the European home. "House has architectural
implications. Home has relational implications. The first implies
a structure; the second implies a family" (Brzezinski, 1989: 2). Or,
in other words, the first refers to "hard" institutional and organizational
frameworks (of economy, law, administration, technology), while the
second implies "soft" intangibles and imponderables (of interpersonal
bonds, loyalties, identifications, networks). To re-enter the European
house is not the same as being accepted into the European home. The
former is easier and quicker: it only requires legal, constitutional
changes and the coordination of the political and economic system
with that prevailing in Western Europe. The latter is much more demanding;
it requires fundamental transformations of mental, cultural, and
civilizational fabric of society. "We cannot return to Europe says
a Polish historian as long as our towns are dirty, our telephones
do not work, our political parties are reactionary and parochial,
and our mentality is Sovietized" (Jedlicki, 1990: 41). It is here,
in the "soft" area of intangibles and imponderables that the most
dangerous obstacles on the road away from communism are to be discovered.
But before identifying them, we have to take a brief excursus into
the realm of general sociological theory.

There is one classical sociological author, dealing with earlier Great
Revolutions American and French to whom we may turn for heuristic
hunches. The lesson Alexis de Tocqueville teaches us is not to underestimate
the "soft" factors of habits, mentalities, and cultural routines.
His focus in the study of successful American democracy is worth quoting
at length, as a contrario it may suggest a lot with reference
to yet unsuccessful democracies of post-communist Europe:

The manners of the people may be considered as one of the
great general causes to which the maintenance of a democratic republic
in the United States is attributable. I here use the word customs
with the meaning which the ancients attached to the word mores; for
I apply it not only to manners properly so called that is to what
might be termed the habits of the heart but to the various
notions and opinions current among men and to the mass of those ideas
which constitute their character of mind. I comprise under
this term, therefore, the whole moral and intellectual condition
of the people. (Tocqueville 1945, vol.I: 12).

This is clearly a mixed bag of concepts: including what people do
(their conduct), what they think (their mentality), and what they
are expected to do and think (their culture). These three levels of
human experience should be kept apart.

Those sociologists who were heeding Tocqueville's lesson were most
often taking either a behavioral approach, observing activities
of societal members; or a psychological approach, investigating individual
attitudes, motivations, reasons, and at most, aggregating them statistically.
When applied to a Communist or post-Communist society, such an approach
will result in a "Socialist mentality" (Koralewicz and Ziolkowski,
1990); a "social subconsciousness" (Marody 1987); "captive minds"
(Milosz, 1953); or "Homo Sovieticus" (Tischner, 1991).

I submit that for our present purposes investigating the dilemmas
of the post-communism transition the more fruitful approach is
cultural: the search for underlying patterns for thinking and
doing, commonly shared among the members of society, and therefore,
external and constraining with respect to each individual member.
Tocqueville's message must be delivered from psychologism, and here
another classical sociologist may be of help: Emile Durkheim. Following
Durkheim's notion of "social facts," we shall consider cultural precepts
such as telling societal members what ought to be done, either
because it is good, or because it is done by most people, or because
it has always been done. In other words, culture invokes the authority
of righteousness, normalcy, or tradition, and derives its legitimacy
and sanctioning power from these sources. When applied to the post-Communist
experience, such an approach leads to the ideas of necessary "moral
infrastructure of democracy," "civic spirit" (Offe, 1991b); "frames
of the mind" (Dahrendorf, 1990); "discourse of civil society" (Alexander,
1989); or "habitus" (Bourdieu 1990).

To use a metaphor, whereas the proponents of psychological orientation
would answer the query about the failures of post-Communism by referring
to the invisible "wall in our heads" (Nagorsky, 1991), I would claim
that there is a more basic "wall in our culture" of which the
conduct and mentality of post-Communist people are just the symptoms
or reflections. This cultural barrier has been raised by several decades
of "real socialism." It has acquired considerable autonomy, and therefore
retains great potential of persistence long after institutional and
organizational foundations of "real socialism" have been broken. This
is the most vicious legacy that communism has left behind.

Let us be more precise. Culture is not something that is given. It
is produced and constructed by the people in the course of a collective
life, historically accumulated and sedimented in tradition. Collective
life has various scope: it is carried out in families, groups, local
communities, nations, and the global society. All those contexts,
or settings, have culture-generating potential. There are quite idiosyncratic
group cultures (e.g., professional soldiers); regional cultures (e.g.,
mountaineers); distinct national cultures (Eskimo, Italian, German);
cultures of the empires (e.g., Roman, Aztec); and emerging global
cultures (most obvious in the area of consumer patterns). In 20th
century Europe, we encounter another peculiar culture-generating setting
of vast scope: the Communist bloc (perhaps the closest historical
analogy would be the culture of the empire). Imposing similar institutional
and organizational forms, similar life-ways, similar ideologies on
a number of nation-states of Eastern and Central Europe, and enforcing
them for several generations, the Communist system succeeded in creating
a common cultural framework, over and above distinct national cultures,
and relatively isolated from wider global culture: the unique syndrome
of values, rules, norms, codes, standards typical for the bloc as
a whole, the bloc culture. Even though there were obvious national
varieties in the style in which those cultural precepts were implemented
(DDR was not the same as Hungary, Poland was not the same as Czechoslovakia,
etc.), there were also fundamental, underlying commonalities. Life
under communism has produced a unique legacy, a lasting cultural syndrome.

Unexpectedly and unintentionally, this cultural legacy has turned
out to play a double-edged historical role. First, it had a
"boomerang effect" on the project of "real socialism," blocking its
operation, undermining its efficiency and eventually leading to its
collapse. And second, outlasting the conditions that have bred it,
and even enhanced to some extent by the immediate effects of prolonged
oppositional struggle and revolutionary experience ("conspiracy syndrome"
and "post-revolutionary malaise") it persists after the demise of
communism and stands in the way of democratic transition. Strangely
enough it has proved to be a subversive force both against
totalitarianism and democracy.

The Paradox of Real Socialism and Post-communism

To understand this baffling phenomenon, we must look closer at the
nature of communism, as well as at the post-Communist experience.
There is an interesting commonality between real socialism, and the
curent efforts at democratic transition. Ideological embellishments
aside, both are responses to the fundamental inequalities in our contemporary
world and the division between the core and the peripheries.
The global society has never been the society of equals. And this
is no less true when Burkina Faso and the United States each have
a single vote in the U.N. Whatever the claims of international law,
in Eastern and Central Europe, ours have never been the core societies.
And the rationale of both communism and post-Communist projects derived
from this historical predicament. They were both the attempts at emancipation,
at escaping the periphery; they were efforts to bridge the
gap between the most developed and the backward, underdeveloped societies.

The first socialist project embarked on forced, imposed modernization
from above, hoping to escape from pre-modernity by means of command
economy, authoritarian rule, and rigid "thought-control" (Koestler,
1975). "Because the socialist states were late industrializers, they
took a path of development that emphasized state mobilization of resources
in order to catch up with early industrializers" (Chase-Dunn, 1992:
30). They were "modernizing societies, which, in seeking to catch
up with the more developed, selected and totalized the Jacobin ideological
and institutional elements of modernity" (Eisenstadt, 1992: 33).

The result was not authentic modernity, but what I would propose to
call "fake modernity." By this, I mean the incoherent, disharmonious,
internally contradictory combination of three components: (a) imposed
modernity in some domains of social life (industrialization, urbanization,
bureaucratization, technological advancement, educational progress,
etc.); (b) the vestiges of traditional, pre-modern society preserved
in other domains (paternalism in politics, barter economy, nepotism,
particularistic principles of status, etc.); (c) the cultural effects
of real socialism blocking the way to modernity incapacitating
the system from within, up to its ultimate destruction (by a mechanism
akin to a self-destroying causal loop). There is a paradox: forced
creation of tangible modernity (at least in some domains, and
to some degree) was accompanied by the destruction of intangible
cultural tissue, which is indispensable for effective and authentic
use of modernity for the benefit of the people, or their own full
enjoyment of modernity. As a result, instead of being narrowed down,
the gap between the periphery and the core has grown. It is the irony
of history that at the end of the 20th century, in the aftermath of
the socialist, modernizing experiment, the Eastern and Central European
societies are deeper in the periphery than before.

The second, post-communist project culminating in the revolutions
of 1989 was the attempt to escape from fake modernity and perennial
peripheric status by means of radical reconstruction of society by
democratization. It is mainly the flight from real socialism
or, as somebody put it metaphorically, "the escape from Asia" (Mokrzycki,
1991). Shmuel Eisenstadt sees the events of 1989 as "rebellions of
protest against a misrepresentation of modernity, a flawed interpretation
of modernity" (Eisenstadt, 1992: 33). And what follows after the revolution
is mostly informed by the negative rejection of the recent past, rather
than any clarity of what is to emerge in the future. "The post-Communist
world is now being built by the negation of the Leninist experience"
(Malia, 1992: 58). But the vicious irony of history works again: instead
of reaching authentic modernity, we plunge into economic crisis, social
chaos, political anarchy, anomie and disorganization. It is indeed
sad that three years after the victorious revolutions one has to agree
with Vaclav Havel when he said, "Society has freed itself, true, but
in some ways it behaves worse than when it was in chains" (Havel,
1992: 6). The road toward democratic polity, market economy and civil
society, or to entering the true European home, rather than
merely building the empty skeleton of a quasi-European house,
is blocked again, this time by the cultural legacy of real socialism,
aggravated by the experience of the anti-Communist struggle and the
revolutions themselves. After two long detours, theoretical and historical,
we have to grapple with this cultural legacy more directly. What does
it consists of, and how did it emerge?

The Anatomy of Civilizational Incompetence

For a developed, democratic and market society to operate, several
resources seem indispensable. Capital, technology, infrastructure,
skilled labour force, a robust middle class, an efficient civil service,
a professional political elite would be some obvious examples. But
there is also a less obvious, underlying cultural resource which may
be called "civilizational competence." By this, in clear analogy
to what the linguists call the "language competence," I mean a complex
set of rules, norms and values, habits and reflexes, codes and matrixes,
blueprints and formats the skillful and semi-automatic mastery
of which is a prerequsite for participation in modern civilization.
Four substantive subcategories of civilizational competence coincide
with four main areas of modern, developed society for which they are
immediately relevant: economy, polity, social consciousness and everyday
life. First, there is the enterprise culture, indispensable
for participation in market economy. Some of its components include:
innovative persistence, achievement orientation, individualistic competitiveness,
rational calculation, and the like. Second, there is the civic
culture, indispensable for participation in democratic polity.
Some of its components include: political activism, readiness to participate,
concern with public issues, rules of law, discipline, respect for
opponents, compliance with the majority, and the like. Third, there
is the discoursive culture, indispensable for participation
in free intellectual flow. Some of its components include: tolerance,
open-mindedness, acceptance of diversity and pluralism, scepticism,
criticism and the like. And four, there is the everyday culture,
indispensable for daily existence in advanced, urbanized, technologically
saturated and consumer-oriented society. Some of its components include:
neatness, cleanliness, orderliness, punctuality, health care, fitness,
facilities to handle mechanical devices and the like.

Civilizational competence defined in this way is the historical achievement
of modernity, which over several centuries has evolved slowly and
gradually in Western societies (Elias, 1982). It clearly did not exist
in pre-modern societies, and was underdeveloped in peripheric Eastern
and Central Europe when it started on the road toward Communist ("pseudo")
modernization. The decades of real socialism not only blocked the
appearance of civilizational competence, but in many ways shaped a
contrary cultural syndrome civilizational incompetence.

This vicious process operated in all domains of social life. The entire
social milieu of real socialism acted against the emergence of civilizational
competence. And thus, the planned, command-oriented economy effectively
paralyzed entrepreneurship. Political autocracy alienated the masses
and blocked the emergence of citizenship. Imperial domination constrained
sovereignty and national identification. Shortages and poverty preempted
any concern with everyday virtues of civility.

All this was effected by means of three causal mechanisms. The first
was direct indoctrination through socialist propaganda, as
well as habituation in the ways typical for socialist economic and
political practices (this is responsible, e.g., for primitive egalitarianism,
demands of welfare and social security from the state, claims to "a
leading political role" by the working class, etc.). The second involved
successful attempts at totalitarian control, by means of coercive
state apparatus (resulting, e.g., in opportunism, blind compliance,
reluctance to take decisions, avoidance of personal responsibility,
etc., which together make up the syndrome of "prolonged infantilism"
which matched the "paternalism" of the state). The third, and perhaps
most crucial, were adaptive, defensive patterns developing spontaneously
against indoctrination and totalitarian control. They took the form
of unintended consequences, or "boomerang effects" (e.g., lack of
respect for law, institutionalized evasions of rules, distrust of
authorities, double standards of talk and conduct, glorification of
tradition, idealization of the West).

Some similar effects were produced by other causal mechanisms appearing
together with the growing opposition against the regime. The conspirational
struggle and contestation against autocratic rule have drawn large
segments of society into this peculiar cultural setting. This unfortunately
did not help to produce civilizational competence. Rather, it strengthened
some of the orientations listed above. The climate of combat, with
the strict borderline between "us" and "them;" allies and enemies,
fosters intolerance. Ideological commitment, necessary for successful
struggle encourages dogmatism; compromise is treated as treason. The
situation of confrontation with the stronger opponent, in the condition
of encirclement by the enemy, requires strong, charismatic leadership
which rarely bothers with the nuances of democracy.

In the immediate aftermath of the victorious revolution, new factors
have appeared which, paradoxically, help to preserve the pre-revolutionary
legacy, blocking the emergence of civilizational competence. First
is the widespread anomie or axiological chaos, common disorientation
to the binding norms and values, valid rules, right ways of life.
Old patterns have fallen down, new ones have not yet been legitimized.
Thrown into uncertainty and devoid of moral guidance, people feel
isolated, lonely, and turn their resentments against others. Interpersonal
suspicion, hostility, and hatred destroy whatever social social bonds
have been left intact by totalitarian rule. Second, the emergence
of new opportunities to raise social status by access to wealth, power,
and prestige generates brutal competition, in which stakes
are high but rules of the game are undeveloped. Civility, fair play,
and cooperative attitudes do not find conducive ground to put out
roots. Third, rigid social controls, both external and internal,
are suddenly released. Police force and the judiciary get disorganized
and lose any legitimacy they might still possess. The law is undermined
by the claims that its totalitarian origins make it illegitimate and
not binding. If law is considered unjust or anachronic why should
one comply? This is not a helpful condition for establishing the rules
of law as the fundamental principle of democracy. And fourth, there
are the unintended costs of opening toward the Western world.
The flow of consumer mass culture of lowest quality arrives first,
before any truly valuable products, and brings pornography and drugs,
brutality and mysticism, organized crime and deviant ways of life.
The adoption of most superficial symbols of capitalist affluence reminds
one of "conspicuous consumption," "nouveau riche" conduct, and the
"Great Gatsby syndrome."

In this way the civilizational incompetence which had originated and
evolved (on the conductive soil of civilizationally backward societies)
in the period of real socialism and preserved by the logic of pre-revolutionary
conspiracy finally has been enhanced by the unintended side-effects
of revolution that still haunt Eastern and Central Europe.

To unravel its composition, I will borrow a theoretical strategy used
recently by Jeffrey Alexander. Applying the late-Durkheimian dichotomy
of the sacred and the profane, coupled with Levi-Straussian idea of
binary opposites organizing the symbolic-cultural domain, he analyzed
the "discourse of democratic society" underlying the political practices
of modern democracies. "We call these sign sets discourses if they
meet two conditions. First, they must not only communicate information,
structuring reality in a cognitive or expressive way: they must also
perform a forceful evaluative task. Binary sets do so when they are
charged by the "religious" symbology of the sacred and profane" (Alexander,
1989: 8). The "discourse of real socialism," as Alexander would
probably label what I am describing as civilizational incompetence,
may be reconstructed as a set of seven oppositions, in each case demonstrating
clear evaluative bias toward one pole: (a) private vs. public, (b)
past vs. present, (c) fate vs. human agency, (d) negative vs. positive
freedom, (e) mythology vs. realism, (f) West vs. East, (g) usefulness
vs. truth. Let us discuss them in more detail, together with their
psychological and behavioral implications.

The most fundamental and lasting cultural code organizing thought
and action in the conditions of real socialism is the opposition of
two spheres of life: private (personal) and public (official).
As an eminent Polish sociologist testifies: "The life of the average
Pole is lived in the two, overlapping worlds: the domain of private
contacts and the institutional-official sphere" (Nowak, 1987:30).
And this observation can certainly be generalized to other "real socialist"
societies. Such an opposition appears in a number of guises: "society
versus authorities," "nation versus state," "the people versus rulers,"
and "we versus them." The opposition has an unambiguous moral flavor.
The private sphere is the domain of the good of virtue, dignity,
and pride; whereas the public sphere is the domain of the bad vice,
disdain, and shame. Activities carried in the private sphere are elevating,
while any contact with the public sphere is "polluting" (Alexander,
1989). Power centers are perceived as alien and hostile. The government
is seen as the arena of conspiracy, deceit, cynicism, or at least
stupidity and inefficiency. To "beat the system" and outwit the authorities
or evade public regulations, rules, and laws is one of the widely
recognized virtues, and successful rogues evoke admiration tainted
with envy. Excessive egotism, attempts at appropriation of common
goods, and "grab and run" tactics to safeguard personal well-being
are condoned, or at least excused. The state is held responsible for
providing welfare and security and blamed for all personal failures.
On the other hand, private connections, networks, loyalties in
the job, among friends, at home are overestimated and idealized.

The second dichotomy opposes the past and the present. It is
typical for people to glorify and idealize earlier times. The phrase
"before the war" (meaning World War II, in the aftermath of which
real socialism was imposed in the sphere of Soviet domination) has
always signified the best in all domains of life. And when it came
to the oppositional struggle and anti-Communist revolution, their
main theme was the return to institutions and traditions of the past,
rather than shaping some new forms for the future (e.g., there was
always a strong suspicion against "market socialism," "social market
economy," or briefly a so-called "third way," which was ridiculed
as the sure way to get to the "Third World"). Jurgen Habermas insightfully
grasps this nostalgic climate in his term "rectifying revolutions,"
observing that in 1989 there was a "total lack of ideas that were
either innovative or oriented towards the future" (Habermas, 1990:
4-5).

The third of our binary pairs is the opposition of fate and human
agency. The world is perceived as operating according to pre-determined
rules and history as running in a pre-established direction. Providence,
or destiny, or chance, or impersonal political forces, or inaccessible
decision-making mechanisms are seen as responsible for human fate.
People believe they have no say in the running of public affairs,
no opportunity to influence their own well-being. Therefore they are
reluctant to engage themselves in public life, because they do not
see any realistic way in which it could change anything, and at the
same time they clearly perceive the risks and the price of activism.
"A fatalistic orientation is thus a learned (and rational)
response to a distant, capricious and unresponsive power imposed from
without" (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990: ch.12, 3-4). The eminent
Polish sociologist Stanislaw Ossowski called it "the Liliput syndrome"
(Ossowski, 1967). Passivism, apathy, "await-and-see" attitude, and
"free-rider" conduct are other pervasive symptoms of this cultural
pattern.

The fourth and related opposition contrasts two brands of freedom:
negative freedom (freedom from, independence, and autonomy),
and positive freedom (freedom to, influence, control, mastery,
potency). The cultural bias is clearly toward the earlier. People
crave for and cherish liberty and self-determination. But this easily
degenerates into anarchy, contempt for and evasion of rules, disrespect
for law and morality, and widespread permissiveness. Mass activism
focuses on defense against real or imagined infractions of freedom
and on opposition and contestation, rather than on positive, constructive
contributions to the operation of society.

The fifth among binary pairs is the opposition of mythology and
realism. There is a tendency to elevate mythical, religious, ideological
thinking over mundane, realistic and rational arguments. People mistake
dreams, visions, idealized heroic traditions, utopian hopes and aspirations
for hard circumstances. There is a constant expectation of miracles,
both economic and political as the recourse to magical strategies
and the belief in some supernatural guidance or protection against
adversities.

The sixth opposition contrasts the West and the East. There
is an uncritical glorification of the Western way of life, economic
and political arrangements, consumer patterns, products, and artistic
achievements. The West is treated in an undifferentiated, stereotyped
way, as a synonym of freedom, affluence, social security and all imaginable
virtues. Any criticism, even invoking internal Western sources, is
treated with suspicion as propaganda. Western political leaders are
endowed with charisma they rarely enjoy at home, and even third-rate
Western consumer products are preferred to local fare.

Finally, the seventh opposition counters usefulness with truth.
Beliefs, loyalties, attachments are treated opportunistically and
instrumentally, valid as long as they bring benefits, till they prove
effective. Truth, faithfulness, and straightforwardness are not considered
as autotelic values. Hypocrisy, cynicism, dogmatism, and intolerance
for others, reign widely in political and intellectual domains. Stereotypes
and prejudices easily become acceptance. Double standards of talk
and deeds official and private are quite common.

It might have been expected that once the institutional structures
of "real socialism" are torn down, the civilizational incompetence
will disappear as well. Unfortunately this is not the case. As one
knowledgeable researcher testifies: "What is striking when we analyze
the political attitudes in the 1990 is their surprising, truly structural
similarity to the attitudes encountered and described in earlier periods"
(Marody, 1991: 166). By some vicious irony of history, the core cultural
oppositions and biases typical of socialist societies, together with
most of their psychological and behavioral expressions, have outlived
the Communist system, and stand in the way of post-Communist reforms.

Is There a Way Out?

Getting rid of the cultural legacy of real socialism and building
civilizational competence is, I submit, the central task facing Eastern
and Central European societies in the 1990. It is a prerequisite,
a necessary condition for attaining true modernity and authentic
democracy, to have a functioning market and an open society. The task
is onerous and protracted but probably attainable. At the close of
this article, let us consider the chances.

The primary question concerns the agents who can do the task.
Culture is omnipresent, permeating all layers of social life. People
are fully immersed in culture. How, then, can they escape its pervasive
grip? How can they raise above their taken-for-granted cultural milieu,
liberate themselves from its constraints, and eventually deconstruct
and reform it? The metaphor of raising oneself by the bootstraps immediately
comes to mind.

The way out of this seemingly hopeless predicament will appear if
we recognize two facts: first, that culture is not a monolith,
but rather a complex, multidimensional and heterogenous entity; and
second, that various groups within the same society are unevenly
immersed in common culture.

Thus, to begin with, multiple cultures coexist, overlap at the same
historical time, and individuals are reached by a variety of cultural
pressures. Some usually the strongest influences derive from
local cultures, of a group, community, or nation. But some
derive from wider cultures regional or global. As we remember
the culture of real socialism, "bloc culture" is located in-between;
it is of intermediate scope. And this means that together with its
oppressive impact, the members of socialist, or former socialist societies,
are faced with the impact of both their local cultures on a smaller
scope, e.g., national, regional, and the global culture of modernity,
articulated in the core societies of the developed West. The more
open the access to these alternative cultural pressures of indigenous
national traditions, and of the strongly Westernized global
culture, the more easily will societies free themselves from the
grip of the socialist legacy.

Even before the anti-Communist revolution, when socialist societies
were relatively insulated from the global culture (though never completely
closed), the strength of national traditions weakened the socialist
culture from within, explaining why some of the Eastern and Central
European societies were more liberal, and less Sovietized than others
(Poland or Hungary would be good cases). With their gradual opening
to the world, and Western culture via mass media, travel, economic
exchange the global culture exerts ever stronger influence, undermining
the socialist culture from without. Both from the inside, and from
the outside, the monopoly of socialist cultural syndrome is eradicated.

Those individuals, or groups, or social categories which are most
prone to fall under the impact of alternative cultural pressures whether
national or global will be most insulated from the grip of socialist
culture and they will become the natural avant-garde of cultural
deconstruction and reform. The hope of eliminating civilizational
incompetence rests with those who are able to acquire civilizational
competence either from local, national culture (if it has such content),
or from global culture, or a combination. They become leaders of civilizational
advancement, spreading out to other groups and social categories.

The second fact is that people are unequally immersed in culture.
Even if we consider only a single cultural influence, for instance,
real-socialist cultural syndrome and ignore the availability of
cultural alternatives various individuals, groups or social categories
are molded by its impact to an uneven degree. Some, for example, party
apparatchics and propagandists, nomenklatura, civil servants, and
secret policemen, are committed strongest in thoughts and deeds: by
ideological creed, political activities, and everyday practices. They
have the strongest stakes in the system and therefore are most vulnerable
to its demands. But others may be less so. Think of the clergy, apolitical
farmers, students, or artists. They seem less dependent and hence
less vulnerable to cultural molding. Such groups, relatively freer
from the constraints of socialist environment, will provide ready
clientele for alternative cultural options national or global, if
and when they become available.

To sum up, the agents able to reform the pernicious socialist syndrome
of civilizational incompetence are to be sought among those who are
either most exposed to the alternative cultural influences,
carrying civilizational competence, or among those who are least
immersed in, or least vulnerable to the impact of socialist cultural
legacy, carrying civilizational incompetence.

There is probably a vast range of variables co-determining such a
peculiar personal condition. But at the first glance, four seem particularly
significant. The exposure to alternative cultural currents is probably
highly correlated with two variables: the level of education and cosmopolitan
orientation. It is well-known that knowledge is liberating. Education
provides the awareness of cultural options, and instills critical
and sceptical attitudes toward any cultural orthodoxy. It is to the
highly educated intellectually elite that one should look for the
forerunners of civilizational competence. Cosmopolitan orientation
is often linked with education. It means either imagined, vicarious,
or actual, direct experience of foreign cultures, providing detached,
objective and relativistic perspective. It is among educated cosmopolitans
that one is most likely to encounter exemplars of civilizational competence.

The insulation from the impact of the socialist cultural syndrome,
carrying civilizational incompetence, is probably correlated with
two other variables. One of them is age. Young people born and raised
during the period when the socialist system was already crumbling
and approaching its demise have had the good luck to escape the most
efficient and pervasive indoctrination and habituation. Youth
gives a chance of independence. And the second variable, often linked
with the first, is oppositional, contesting orientation. People
who opposed the socialist system self-consciously raised a mental
barrier against its ideological and cultural impact, and they were
more sensitive to the evidence of its counter-civilizational implications.
Those who coupled their oppositional beliefs with actions, entering
conspiracies or participating in anti-Communist movements ("i.e.,
Solidarity," "Charter 77," etc.) not only strengthened their attitudes
by deeds, but provoked rejection and stigmatization by the authorities
(discrimination, harassment or outright oppression). In effect they
were pushed to the status of outsiders, staying at the margins of
official culture, which effectively saved them from its grip, and
allowed them to preserve personal autonomy and self-identity. Thus,
both categories seem free and ready to acquire civilizational competence,
if and when it becomes available.

If this reasoning is correct, social categories manifesting some or
all of these traits are most likely to beget the champions of radical
cultural deconstruction and reform of socialist legacy the leaders
of cultural modernity bringing much needed civilizational competence.
They will constitute a hypothetical elite, or avant-garde of civilizational
progress. But obviously, for the post-Communist transition to succeed,
the reshaping of culture cannot stop at the level of elites, but must
reach a much wider segment of society, and ultimately permeate it
as a whole. What are the chances for this?

It seems that the same processes which enabled the elite potential
agents to be able to reshape the culture from within, provide the
mechanisms which may help their mission to suceed. The first and most
important is the process of globalization. It may be an exaggaration
to believe as do some observers that the Communist system was destroyed
by the satellite TV dishes, allowing the "demonstration effect" of
Western affluence to undermine all remaining legitimacy of "real socialism."
But it is certainly true that the irreversible spread of technologies,
products, knowledge, images, ideas from the core of contemporary civilization
to its peripheries was equally significant in bringing the demise
of communism, as it is now in shaping the course of post-communist
transition. One crucial domain of globalization is culture, and within
culture, that particular syndrome of values, norms, codes, and symbols
that we call civilizational competence. It irresistibly spreads from
the core to the peripheries. It is smuggled with the images of Western
ways of life through the media or by direct, participant observation
of tourists, visitors, trade partners, Gastarbeiter. But it also comes
in more tangible forms as an effect of economic and political integration.
The requirement to adapt local laws, political and administrative
institutions, terms of trade, business practices, etc., to world standards
undermines the legacy of real socialism more effectively that any
ideological appeals. In this sense, the association with EEC brings
much more than mere economic benefits. It imposes the framework of
civilization.

The second mechanism is technological progress. I wish to defend
a limited version of convergence theory, to the effect that the advance
of technologies, and particularly the appearance of high-tech industries
and sophisticated consumer products, stimulates the civilizational
competence. Modern technologies demand certain standards of organization,
discipline, diligence, care, and they also pose certain "soft" requirements
of neatness, cleanliness, orderliness, esthetics. Is it an accident
that a computer-chips factory looks so different from a smoke-stack
metallurgical plant? Or that a modern, functional household equipped
with sophisticated gadgets enforces so different a life-style than
that of a typical traditional peasant cottage? With the accelerated
technological progress embracing former socialist societies, we can
expect significant pressure toward general civilizational advancement,
more effective than moralizing and preaching.

The third promising mechanism is economic privatization. Placing
industry, commerce and services in private hands is not only indispensable
for mobilizing the economy and raising overall economic efficiency,
it also has equally important cultural side-effects. By experience,
trial and error, it enforces self-reliance, responsibility, calculation,
good organization of work, discipline, punctuality, etc. It provides
the best lesson that those virtues comprised by civilizational competence
simply work to turn out beneficial and measurable profit. Is it an
accident that any private grocery store opened in a Eastern European
town is so strikingly more civilized than earlier, state-run outlets?
Well-organized, efficient enterprises make up islands of modernity,
the exemplars of civilizational competence from which it may spread
by imitation to the whole economy, including the huge state-owned
enterprises, destined to stay around for some more time due to practical
constraints. In this economic area, the role of multinational corporations
or joint ventures establishing the outposts and enclaves of modern
business culture is hard to overestimate. They impose ready-made patterns
of modern, civilized business organization, management and labor.
Thus, whether indigenously developed or imported, the private enterprise
is an efficient channel through which civilizational competence evolves
and spreads.

And the final mechanism is perhaps the most exacting of all: political
democratization. Either by importation of "well-tested" political
solutions (as Lech Walesa used to plead), or by slow development of
indigenous democratic institutions, the efficiency of government and
administration will surely be raised. And, what is even more important
from our present perspective, the political reform will enforce civilizational
competence. The constitutional framework of democracy will turn old
political habits of autocracy, nepotism, favoritism, paternalism,
particularism, dogmatism, intolerance, etc., into maladaptive and
dysfunctional ways, guaranteeing political failures rather than successes.
They will slowly be replaced by their opposites, fitting the new democratic
polity. As Claus Offe observes:

By instilling the appreciation and a favorable attitude
toward the routines of democratic participation and representation
into their respective social domains, and also by developing a strong
interest in their own respective role in the making of public policies independent
trade unions, employer's associations, leagues of farmers, professional
associations, political parties, etc., can reinforce the popular consensus
that supports the constitution and the practice of democratic government
(Offe, 1991a:9).

The rooting of civilizational competence in political institutions
and political practices, both at the central and local levels, will
bring the ultimate victory of modernity, but one which will be particularly
hard to win. First of all, because it requires a long time,
and time seems scarce in the post-Communist world. As Bronislaw Geremek
observes: "Democracies are built only over time, through the forming
and functioning of democratic institutions. The process
is one of gradual maturation, both of democracy itself and of people
in the ways of democracy" (Geremek, 1992: 15). And Ralf Dahrendorf
is even more pessimistic, projecting the appearance of rooted democratic
tissue in no less than sixty years (Dahrendorf, 1990). The second
reason for difficulty is that the new democratic constitution of our
society must be established through democratic procedure, by people
who are not yet democrats at heart, still trapped in the legacy
of civilizational incompetence. The hope to break this vicious circle
must rest with an initially small elite group of citizens highly
educated, cosmopolitan, young at least in spirit, ready to contest
established ways who have already escaped the grip of "real socialism"
or who have never succumbed to it in the first place. And the hope
must also be placed in those universal mechanisms and processes which
embrace the global society and engulf the post-Communist enclave in
their salutary influence.

On the face of it, it all looks like an extremely hard job for several
generations. But in the quite recent past we have witnessed totally
unpredictable turns of history and two "huge surprises." Let us hope
that the success of the post-Communist transition will provide us
with another great surprise. After all, it is certainly more probable
than the fall of communism seemed just a few years ago.

References

Alexander, J. C., 1989. "The Discourse of American Civil
Society: A New Proposal for Cultural Studies," Los Angeles: UCLA (mimeo).